University of Wisconsin special education professors Kimber Wilkerson and Beverly Trezek founded the UW–Madison Teacher Residency Program in 2023 with support from a Teacher Quality Partnership grant, a program developed by the U.S. Department of Education (ED) to fund teacher education and teaching residency programs in high-need school districts across the county.
TRP was planned as a three-year program, with three cohorts and a total of 36 students serving 14-month terms taking UW courses online and in-person and teaching special education full-time under the mentorship of a veteran teacher at Milwaukee Public Schools.
Participants would graduate with a master’s degree in special education and an agreement to continue working at MPS for the next three years. The first cohort was set to wrap up in Summer 2025.
But the program received a letter Feb. 12 from the ED announcing its termination of the grant that same day. The letter deemed the program not in alignment with the department’s current priorities, specifically due to its “emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion,” Wilkerson said.
With the ED cutting more than $600 million in funding for similar programs since Feb. 17, dozens of other universities across the country have also lost support. Wilkerson said California Polytechnic State University received a cancellation letter the same night and Virginia Commonwealth University a few days prior.
The partnership is not a DEI program and is not focused on any particular identity groups, Wilkerson said. But, its grant proposal articulated the program’s goal of recruiting from as diverse a group of applicants as possible, which could have been perceived as contradicting the ED’s current interpretation of discrimination, which includes the targeting of specific groups in hiring.
This is a different approach than the ED has taken in the past — Wilkerson added that a prompt from the original grant proposal asked them to explain how the program would contribute to the greater diversity of the overall teacher workforce.
While the ED has cut all support for UW’s TRP, Wilkerson said she feels confident they will be able to secure funding to support the first cohort through completion of the program. The UW School of Education, Wisconsin Center for Education Research and MPS have all committed to contributing resources.
Wilkerson is working on appealing the ED’s decision, and while the likelihood of a successful appeal is unknown, she feels they will find support for the next cohort, though it is unsure where that might come from.
Terminations like these threaten to make people feel like the field of special education has the potential to be undermined, Wilkerson said. She is telling students that regardless of whatever changes in the ED, there will always be students with disabilities who need additional support and specialized instruction.
“That [the program’s cancellation] makes me sad and frustrated because there’s such a need for special education and anything that damages people’s enthusiasm feels like a step backward,” Wilkerson said.
Wilkerson stressed the significance of public pushback to these cuts, as she said this has historically pressured federal officials to change their stance on some issues.
